Anarchy and Old Dogs (Briefe an einen Blinden)

A sightless dentist is struck by a logging company truck, and Siri Paiboun becomes involved – mainly as there is nobody else performing his function as coroner. The dentist, it transpires, was en route to post a letter, but Siri, when examining it, finds it impossible to read (the dentist has used invisible ink and has then encrypted the message). But as Siri peels back the layers of confusion surrounding the case, he realises that the stakes are as high as might be imagined: in fact, he has stumbled on nothing less than a plot to replace the government.

They arrived at the little Pakse Cinema ten minutes after the film had started. It was a delight to be there. The Odeon, the only picture house in Vientiane, had been commandeered as a political lecture hall. The day that happened, Civilai and Siri' hearts had been deprived of oxygen. They'd been starved of one mor breath of culture. The old boys were movie aficionados: addicts, some might say. Their habit had been nurtured in the smoky cinemas of Paris. In Hanoi, and in the caves of Huaphan, they'd attended every film projection, no matter how desperately awful the movie on offer promised to be. They were perhaps the only two in the audience to derive pleasure from such blockbusters as "Rural Sanitation in Southern Yunan" and "The Benefits of Oiling Your Weapon". They'd left the cinema cave in tears after a showing of "The Public Humiliation of an Illiterate Goat Herder". The films didn't matter. It was the atmosphere they loved, that truly social feeling of strangers sharing emotions, laughing together, being thoroughly depressed together, being moved as one, like passengers on a funfair ride. They missed it: that instant communism

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He took a deep breath before walking into Pakse's best hotel, his home for over a week. The place was about as sophisticated as fried rice. The receptionist was sitting cross-legged on the floor behind the front desk plucking a chicken. He leaned over the counter and she smiled at him. She was in her teens and living proof that gues-relations skills are acquired over time.